Lists
by catastrophechao
Summary: Yukio makes lists. Alas, there's no genre for introspective character study.


Lists

Yukio makes lists.

Some are of practical things: groceries and due dates, lesson plans, his students' grades. Others petty: the number of times Rin has forgotten to take out the trash, how many beers Shura drinks in a night, names he's been called.

Many are meaningless. The sort things a child writes to while away the time: what he would take to a desert island, favorite books, the 54 undisputed countries of Africa.

And some are intimately personal.

There is a list of the lies he has told, and one of promises broken and bent. There's a list of the people he cares about: Shiro, Rin, the monks, Shiem i and, appended to the bottom in bitterly careful script, Shura. A list of regrets.

There is a list of the things that frighten him. That one he has had for a very long time, so that many of the oldest items are crossed out: spiders, coal tar, the lights on the smoke detector glowing like eyes in the night. But it seems to be ever growing, the little fears of childhood replaced by newer, greater terrors: Mephisto, Rin, responsibility, the future. He's afraid of failure. He writes that down. He's afraid of losing control. He adds that, too.

He's got lists of emotions, feelings he's had in different situations, and lists of scenarios, pages upon pages of "what if?"

He even made a list, once, after that first day and the horrible scene in the classroom, of how he would feel if Rin were really to die. He penned it the same night, while his brother snored peacefully in the bed across the room, and skipped past the knee-jerk of childish sentiment (like sad or scared) straight to guilty, and furious, and lost, and vindicated.

He has lists of mission details and facts about people he has met, of conspiracy theories he's heard, and another of those he might believe. He has a list of accomplishments: grades, scholarship, dragoon, doctor, his reputation (not as a coward, the scaredy-cat, but as an exorcist - steady, reliable, efficient, precise.) He likes to picture himself as a bit of machinery, gear trains and chain drives, springs, ball-bearings, and seals.

He does it to keep himself organized. That's what he tells people, when they notice the lines of neat script, single words and short sharp sentence fragments marching down a page, when they catch him writing. It doesn't matter that they see, because everything's in code. Even his gradebook is a snarl of student ids and nonstandard dates and incomprehensible short-hand.

It says something about him, he knows. Shiro told him, a long time ago, that people judge others based on what they know of themselves. A liar expects others to lie; a thief expects them to steal. Yukio doesn't know what he expects - people to be after him, he supposes, but whether it's a sign of paranoia, or a guilty conscience, or a nosy nature, he isn't sure.

The lists tell him something else. They are meant to keep him organized, that isn't a lie, but it's not what people think, either. He doesn't need a reminder to buy fresh milk. He needs a reminder that he drinks milk at all. It would be such an easy thing to forget, in the press and crush of school and teaching and work and Rin. The lists help with that. He can keep it all written down, document who, exactly, Okumura Yukio is. Of what he likes and wants and cares about, of what he does and does not believe, of what matters, and who. He can find himself there, between the bullet points, and pin himself down.

Rin doesn't need to do things like this. He is always so entirely himself, even with a tail and bright blue flames playing across his skin. Sometimes Yukio wonders if they're even related at all. Perhaps, in the primordial soup of earliest development, his and Rin's DNA managed to miss on every count, so despite having the same mother, the same father, they're no more similar than strangers passing on a street. It would explain a lot, he thinks.

Yukio fiddles with the lamp on the little desk in the room he shares with his brother, and ponders his longest list.

He's afraid of centipedes, and of being alone. He's afraid of being buried alive. He's not afraid of heights, not anymore, but he's afraid of the sea and its dark crushing depths. He's afraid that Shiro loved Rin best.

He's afraid Shiemi does, too.

He stops writing, and closes his eyes. He's afraid there's something wrong with him; that he is basely defective, intrinsically flawed. He's afraid that while Rin inherited Satan's power, Yukio got the shortage of humanity.

The hand holding the pen does not move, but he can feel himself trembling and there's the salty taste of tears in his mouth.

He pictures himself as a bit of machinery, a conglomeration of spare parts, the cast-off traits his brother didn't need or couldn't use, all stuck together into the shape of a boy. He sees it slowly shaking itself apart.


End file.
